"In these articles Professor Bachrach starts by looking at aspects of the ""barbarian"" occupation of the land of the Roman Empire, from Britain to the Alan settlements in southern Gaul. His particular interest, however, is in political and, above all, in the military structures that grew out of the Early Middle Ages. He has sought to demonstrate that there was a fundamental continuity in military organization and tactics from the Merovingian through the Carolingian period. As he shows, there is no reason to connect to the origins of ""feudalism"" with Charles Martel's wish to create a force of cavalry, and it is a fallacy that he grasped the potential of the stirrup for enabling mounted shock combat. On the contrary, its use in the West progressed only slowly, and it had nothing to do with the origins or growth of feudalism."
By:
Bernard S. Bachrach
Imprint: Variorum
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Volume: CS 405
Dimensions:
Height: 224mm,
Width: 150mm,
Spine: 157mm
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9780860783749
ISBN 10: 086078374X
Series: Variorum Collected Studies
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 22 April 1993
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Further / Higher Education
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents: Gildas, Vortigern and constitutionality in sub-Roman Britain; The questions of King Arthur’s existence and of Romano-British naval operations; The Alans in Gaul; Another look at the barbarian settlement in southern Gaul; The origin of Amorican chivalry; Two Alan motifs in Ã…berg’s Aquitanian style; Procopius and the chronology of Clovis’s reign; Procopius, Agathias and the Frankish military; Was the Marchfield part of the Frankish constitution?; Who were the Ripariolibriones?; A reassessment of Visigothic Jewish policy; Charles Martel, mounted shock combat, the stirrup and feudalism; Military organisation in Aquitaine under the early Carolingians; Charlemagne’s cavalry: myth and reality; On the role of the Jews in the establishment of the Spanish March (768-814); A picture of Avar-Frankish warfare from a Carolingian psalter of the early 9th century in light of the Strategicon; Animals and warfare in early medieval Europe; Index.
Bernard S. Bachrach, University of Minnesota, USA
Reviews for Armies and Politics in the Early Medieval West
'From start to finish...this useful collection of Bernard Bachrach's shorter studies certainly makes you think.' Guy Halsall, Early Medieval Europe
